Shelter search starts anew

Updated 9:34 pm, Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Ballston Spa

Fallout from a failed vote to hire a Saratoga County animal shelter director continued Wednesday as leaders started over in an effort to fill the vacant position.

Coming off Tuesday's rare but bruising defeat, county board of supervisors Chairman Alan Grattidge said he was disappointed by the board's decision not to approve the leadership's nominee, Christina Abele, 22, for the $62,413-a-year job at the shelter.

He said county leaders were weighing whether to hold new interviews with candidates who had previously applied, or re-advertise the position with updated job requirements.

More Information

"There was a strong suggestion from a number speakers that the minimum qualifications should be changed," Grattidge said of Tuesday's board meeting. "We're certainly going to take a look at that."

County officials are trying to fill the director position recently vacated by Dan Butler, who retired after leading the shelter for more than three decades. The Republican board's highly unusual rebuke of its own leaders means the new $5 million facility will continue to operate without a director until supervisors decide how to fill it.

Reopening the job would require accepting resumes and conducting new interviews, while addressing "day-to-day operations in some manner," Grattidge said. The process moves through various committees. "The earliest we would be able to do something is the April meetings," Grattidge said.

Clifton Park Supervisor Philip Barrett, who opposed hiring Abele, said county leaders mismanaged the process. The county should reopen the candidate search and rewrite the job's qualifications to insist candidates have at least two years of managerial experience.

"I feel bad that Ms. Abele had to go through the process, with the way it turned out," Barrett said. "But obviously, there were legitimate concerns raised by many people, and I, for one, did not have good answers for those concerns."

The county's Public Safety Committee, headed by Halfmoon Supervisor Mindy Wormuth, nominated Abele to replace Butler. But the nomination became embroiled in charges that Abele, a recent college graduate, didn't have the necessary management experience to run the shelter, and was chosen because of her father's political donations to Wormuth and Halfmoon Republicans.

Seventeen of the board's 23 members were present at Tuesday's meeting. Ten supported Abele's hiring, seven voted against it and six were absent and counted as "no" votes. The weighted vote, in which each supervisor casts a vote representing their community's population, ended 91,563 against her hiring, 89,628 for it and 38,417 absent/no.

"It was unfortunate there was that many supervisors absent, and a few changed their minds at the last minute," Grattidge said.